Mark Cuban: Mavs Better Off Without Deron Williams

Mark Cuban has been in the news quite a lot recently, making a slew of boldstatements. Well, those statements may pale in comparison to his most recent remark, which is probably the boldest of them all—Cuban, whose Dallas Mavericks made an all-out effort to sign then-free agent Deron Williams, believes Dallas is actually in a much better situation without the star point guard on its roster. Um, huh? In all fairness, only time will tell how things pan out, but on the surface, Cuban’s remarks are a bit mind-boggling. From a purely basketball standpoint, it could be a fair point. From a purely personal standpoint, though, one could say someone is still a bit salty that Deron chose Brooklyn over his hometown Mavs.

The Mavericks owner said Tuesday that the team is actually better off with Williams not on the roster. “In hindsight, I don’t know if I would have been happy,” Cuban, a guest on the Ben and Skin Show on 103.3 [KESN-FM], said of the possibility of inking Williams to a long-term, maximum contract. “I think we’re in better position now then we would’ve been if we’d gotten him.” Wait. What? “I don’t want to pick on Deron Williams because he’s a great, great, great, great player, so it’s not necessarily him per se,” Cuban said. “Obviously the decision was to go for him. But the conversation was, ‘OK, once you take $17.1 million in salary to what we have with Dirk and [Shawn Marion], then what do you do?’ That’s your squad. And it’s not just your squad for this year, it’s your squad for next year, other than the $3.3 million mini mid-level [exception]. “So, that was a challenge that we had because we want to win. Everybody talks about Dirk’s window, but not only would it have been difficult to add players, it also would have been difficult to trade players. In reality, that was the same problem that Deron had. Because he looked and saw the same thing and said, ‘Now what are you going to do?'” In regards to not attending the final face-to-face July meeting with Williams, Cuban said: “Obviously, I had a conflict, but I was texting him. I was texting him. We were going back and forth quite a bit.”